“This is not a book for the faint-hearted. In chilling detail, David Harsanyi exposes the brutal and bloody dangers looming ahead during Obama’s second term. Harsanyi outlines how the Nanny State progressive-in-chief has enabled the four horsemen of debt, dependency, national decline, and the culture of death. Yes, it is apocalyptic. No, it is not irreversible. Conservatives must pray, pick themselves up, and pull together to turn our country back from Obama’s highway to hell. America must heed Harsanyi’s prophetic work!”

—Michelle Malkin, New York Times bestselling author of Culture of CorruptionYou can order the book on Amazon. Below is a free chapter.***

As metaphors go, it’s an entirely apt one. To begin with, Conquest, Famine, War, Death—the four horsemen of the Obama Era— are coming, and they are coming in the form of a national debt disaster, an epidemic of government dependence, an erosion of our world standing, and a nihilistic view about the value of human life. If our federal government had been inclined to do anything to avoid these impending catastrophes—and I’m not sure it ever was—that day has now passed. Barack Obama’s reelection ensures we’ll be deal- ing with some level of societal instability and economic calamity in the future. No, these calamities won’t transform us into Bangladesh, and they won’t mean the United States will cease to exist. They will only mean that this particular iteration of the United States will be no more. “

” If we reach the following highly unpleasant conclusion, what are the implications?

The United States has taken a political turn which, at least for the next four years, will guarantee that it does not play the role of a great power mindful of and willing to protect its own true interests, to support its allies, and to combat its real foes. On the contrary, through inaction or active effort the leadership of America will take counterproductive actions that achieve the opposite result. And there are certain factors — radical ideological hegemony, a weak economy and growing debt, structural social changes, the weakness and disorganization of the opposition — that may make this situation regarding America’s international behavior and policies a long-term, partly irreversible condition. In other words, we don’t know if America is finished as the world’s leading power, but we do know that it will not have leadership and certainly not leadership in a good direction for a while and perhaps will never fully recover.

So what do those outside the United States do to face this situation? (Please note that I am speaking here only of U.S. foreign policy and just remarking on the domestic situation.)

There are those readers who would contest the accuracy of this statement. They will say that Barack Obama is a great president, or at least a decent one, and there is no big prob. lem regarding U.S. foreign policy at all. In fact, he and his team, which now includes Secretary of State-designate John Kerry, will be just fine, or at least okay. They will make the point — valid, but irrelevant — that the United States doesn’t control everything in the world . “

” Faced with the prospect of 1,478 more days of empty Obama promises and speeches, at least half of Americans have now decided that America’s best days are behind us. While whopping majorities expect this year’s economy will remain troubled. That federal deficits will continue. That crime will increase. Taxes too. Along with foreign turmoil. While America’s influence and power decline globally.

Good thing these geniuses voted to return the Chicago crowd to the White House to handle all this. Again.

The post-New Year’s Gallup survey finds that less than half the population (47%) now believes the country’s best days lie ahead. Optimism about the future of the United States has been a standard popular expectation for many years and a staple of political discourse. Remember Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America”? But half the country is sure those days are as far gone now as Obama’s promises of 2008.

A majority of independents (55%) are convinced the best is past, while three-out-of-four Republicans agree on that gloomy outlook. (Scroll down for an effective political video capturing that sense.)

Sixty-nine percent of Democrats, however, are sure the nation’s best days lie ahead, possibly due to mental damage from previous drug use. While only 28% of Dems agree with independents and the GOP.

By a nearly two-to-one margin Americans are certain that 2013 will see 12 months of economic troubles. That seems like a pretty safe expectation since that’s what we’ve had for four years of this administration, despite $800 billion-plus in wasted economic stimulus. Call it Obama Continuity. “

A few weeks ago we linked to a photo essay of Detroit in decline . The pictures were both enlightening and depressing . Today we offer another trip into the bowels of civic decay . Whereas the previous post was grim enough, the new one offers a more in-depth exploration of the remains of a city in ruins .

” Motown has ran out of gas. The city looks like a ghost-town or a place that has been hit by a typhoon. Some areas even look like war zones. As I drive around downtown Detroit and in the adjacent neighborhoods below the infamous 8 mile road that defines Detroit’s northern border, I have post-apocalyptic visions. All I see are beautiful abandoned art deco buildings and Neo-Gothic skyscrapers, rusted factories, broken windows, desolated churches, evacuated schools, unoccupied hotels and motels, dried up gas stations, empty supermarkets and shuttered shops. I also see thousands of deserted homes. ”

Fisher Body 21: This plant was built to house a body assembly line for Cadillacs and Buicks in the 1920’s and ceased operations in the 1974. The name was well known to the public, as General Motors vehicles displayed a “Body by Fisher” emblem on their door sill plates until the mid-1980s. Fisher Body is now officially a Detroit Police impound lot and faces an uncertain future. This plant was probably my favorite spot in Detroit.

Congratulations on the new tax hikes that will restrain the economy next year as the Bush tax cuts end and the myriad dictates and fees imposed by Obamacare begin. We are already seeing companies downsize or flee and investors begin to bail out of the stock market. Rest assured that your tactics of class warfare will ultimately succeed just as well as they have throughout the world for the last two centuries.

Congratulations on giving us an excellent preview of what lies ahead with your stewardship in the Golden State, where Global Economic Analysis says — after the various statewide ballot initiatives and elections — “Prepare for the Demise of California“….

” In political terms, Hurricane Sandy and the Benghazi consulate debacle exemplify at home and abroad the fundamental unseriousness of the United States in the Obama era. In the days after Sandy hit, Barack Obama was generally agreed to have performed well. He had himself photographed in the White House Situation Room, nodding thoughtfully to bureaucrats (“John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; Tony Blinken, National Security Advisor to the Vice President; David Agnew, Director for Intergovernmental Affairs”) and Tweeted it to his 3.2 million followers. He appeared in New Jersey wearing a bomber jacket rather than a suit to demonstrate that when the going gets tough the tough get out a monogrammed Air Force One bomber jacket. He announced that he’d instructed his officials to answer all calls within 15 minutes because in America “we leave nobody behind.” By doing all this, the president “shows” he “cares” – which is true in the sense that in Benghazi he was willing to leave the entire consulate staff behind, and nobody had their calls answered within seven hours, because presumably he didn’t care. So John Brennan, the Counterterrorism guy, and Tony Blinken, the National Security honcho, briefed the president on the stiff breeze, but on Sept. 11, 2012, when a little counterterrorism was called for, nobody bothered calling the Counterterrorism Security Group, the senior U.S. counterterrorism bureaucracy.

I don’t know whether Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan can fix things, but I do know that Barack Obama and Joe Biden won’t even try – and that therefore a vote for Obama is a vote for the certainty of national collapse. Look at Lower Manhattan in the dark, and try to imagine what America might look like after the rest of the planet decides it no longer needs the dollar as global reserve currency. For four years, we have had a president who can spend everything but build nothing. Nothing but debt, dependency, and decay. As I said at the beginning, in different ways the response to Hurricane Sandy and Benghazi exemplify the fundamental unseriousness of the superpower at twilight. Whether or not to get serious is the choice facing the electorate Tuesday.”

” I wouldn’t claim to know what America believes or even what “New Hampshire Believes,” but this
is what I believe – that another four years of the present statist ascendancy will seal America’s
fate. As noted here previously, the International Monetary Fund predicts that China will become
the world’s dominant economic power by 2016 So the guy elected in November will be the first
president since Grover Cleveland to know what it feels like to be the global also-ran. Even this, however, understates the size of catastrophe the United States faces. There are no precedents in history for a great power spending itself to death
on the scale America is doing. Obama has added $5 trillion to the national debt, and has nothing
to show for it. Do you know how difficult that is to do? Personal debt per citizen is currently about 50 grand, but at least you got a La-Z-Boy recliner and a gas-fired barbecue out of it. Obama has spent America’s future, and left no
more trace than if he and his high school “choom gang” had wheeled a barrow of five trillion in large notes behind the gym and used them for rolling paper. Right now, combined total debt in the United States is just shy of $700,000 per
family. Add in the so-called “unfunded liabilities” that a normal American business would have to
include in its SEC filings but from which U.S. Government accounting conveniently absolves
itself, and you’re talking about a debt burden per family of about a million bucks. In other words, look around you: the paved roads, the landscaped shopping mall, the Starbucks and the juice bar and the mountain bike store. … There’s nothing holding the joint up.”